Bullet Points on PowerPoint [Karaoke]

Last night’s PowerPoint Karaoke was a great one. A goodly number of people showed up, despite the gorgeous weather outdoors. Our presenters (Bill Corbett, Joe Bozic, Kelvin Hatle, and Dawn Krosnowski) all made quite an impression, with subjects ranging from tarantula transport conspiracy theories to preventing pregnancy with bread. And every once in a while, a slide caused a presenter to just stare and laugh for a moment.

PowerPoint Karaoke is a blast to do. I’m always flattered that I get to work with these talented folks. Plus, even though I long ago discovered that improv comedy isn’t one of my talents, I love that I’ve found ways to contribute to improv in other ways — as a graphic artist (PowerPoint Karaoke) and a film editor (Killer B’s).

Theatre Arlo and I have been working on PowerPoint Karaoke since CONvergence of last year, and have been at the Bryant-Lake Bowl since November. We’ve had some lean months, but it seems that PowerPoint Karaoke is starting to build an audience. (Our stint at the very popular Vilification Tennis show a couple months back probably had something to do with that.) Plus, it seems that Bryant-Lake Bowl likes us enough that they want to keep us around. Hooray!

Some random facts about the show:

Bill Stiteler and I have created around 420 slides for our combined shows. We each create about half of the slides. I get tons of compliments after the show about the presentation itself, because I’m the one behind the computer. However, Bill certainly deserves half of those compliments.

The only time that we have re-used slides is for the Vilification Tennis show. For that, we re-used the best slides from our December show, which was only seen by about 5 people. (There was a snowstorm that night.)

Each presenter gets 12 slides, plus one “In Summary” slide at the end. They have 6 minutes to complete their presentation. About half don’t make it to the end.

I never realized how much this project would make me appreciate the “Random Article” button on Wikipedia.

The Bryant-Lake Bowl has booked us through next year! PowerPoint Karaoke happens on the first Tuesday of every month, at 7:00pm. (We will be taking July and August off, due to CONvergence and the Fringe Festival.)